Did you know Neuro-Structural Correction helps your body to fight the effects of stress?

In the 1950’s, Dr. Selye studied the effects of stress on the human body to which he concluded that stress is the cause of all disease. It did not matter whether the stressor was mechanical, chemical or emotional, the body always reacted the same. This work won him the 1964 Nobel Prize!

According to Selye, the body produces an alarm reaction to any form of stress that threatens its well-being. Unless the stress is unusually strong, we are not even aware of the body’s response. This initial alarm reaction is followed by a period of adaptation and if the stress continues long enough, compensation to the stress. This process will continue until the body can no longer handle the stress and then secondary conditions begin to emerge. It is at this point that the patient usually seeks help.

Our brand of chiropractic care is called Neuro-Structural Correction. In this, we utilize specialized tests to determine the effects of stress and your body’s response to it.

Many people think they should wait until secondary conditions emerge but what we encourage is for you to come in for a well-check to determine the effects of stress on your body before this happens.

This is how we are able to help so many children and adults live with a better expression of life.

Get checked today and with our specialized test to get a look at how your body is handling stress and avoiding disease!

http://cdahealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Do-You-Suffer-From-Decision-Fatigue-1.png788940Amy Yardleyhttp://cdahealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NewSpoelstraLogopng_0116-300x217.pngAmy Yardley2018-01-03 10:00:522017-12-21 20:59:05Did You Know Stress Can Make You Sick?

Yes, it’s true – we are not a traditional chiropractic office nor do we practice traditional chiropractic here at Spoelstra Family Chiropractic. It’s not that we think there is anything wrong with other chiropractic techniques or offices but we do have a very different approach.

We are unique from the techniques we use to the atmosphere of our office and people recognize that when they walk through the door. It is our purpose to provide clinical excellence with the latest technology, in a loving, caring, fun and safe atmosphere for the entire family.

At Spoelstra Family Chiropractic, our primary focus is an area of chiropractic known as Neuro-Structural Correction. The vast majority of cases that make their way into our office involve significant Neuro-Structural shifts of one or more spinal segments. These Neuro-Structural shifts are the primary condition that will ultimately reveal themselves as “symptoms” –or what Neuro-Structural Doctors refer to as Secondary Conditions. These are things such as chronic pain, headaches, ear infections, chronic constipation or developmental challenges.

The goal is correction of these shifts. To accomplish this, our process involves the use of multiple structural adjusting techniques and instruments combined with Neuro-Structural rehabilitation. The result is improvement or correction of Neuro-Stuctural shifts and commonly elimination or decreased secondary conditions. For more information check it out at www.cdahealth.com.

You need to ask yourself something very simple when thinking about pain. Why would your body, which keeps you alive throughout every second of the day, without so much as your brain having to form a thought about it, put you in a situation where you feel pain? You keep breathing, your heart keeps pumping, and you keep blinking your eyelids, but you never have to think about those functions. Why then would this brilliant system also bring you the pitfalls of the terrible neurological sensation known as pain?

The answer is simple. Your body is much smarter than you! While you don’t have to think to stay alive, you also do not have to think to experience pain. The same way your brain tells your eyelids to blink, to keep your eyes from drying out, it also tells your hand to retract from something hot because you are getting burned.You don’t have to form a conscious thought about it, it just happens automatically.

The same brain that keeps your heart beating, sends all sorts of information to your conscious brain. Let’s say you hurt your elbow from a fall. You are now experiencing pain and swelling. Why?

Well, the pain is there to tell you that this appendage is now injured. It does so at first with great waves of pain, but later subsides to subtle messages when you use that appendage in the wrong way. The swelling is there to stabilize the injured portion of your arm, sort of like a cast. These are the basic functions of your body doing exactly what they were made to do!

If I tell you that pain and swelling are good (to an extent), what would you say? I encourage you to really think about what your body is doing. Let’s say you get in a terrible car accident. You have massive bodily injury, but you pull yourself from the wreckage and crawl to safety. Only after the shock wears off, do you start to feel the pain of your injuries.

Again, your body, as a whole, is smarter than your conscious brain. It can delay your sensation of pain in self preservation of your life, while you crawl to safety. You may never have a conscious thought about it, but your body knows exactly what to do!

So why is it that we, as a worldly population, have decided to curse our body’s knowledge and instead, adopt a mindset of numbing ourselves of the pain? Pain is our body saying, “Houston, we have a problem”. We are saying, “Houston, we have a Tylenol”.

This is the wrong mindset to achieve health and well-being. Pain relievers act as a block in the messages reaching the brain that tell us we are experiencing the sensation of pain. Do you know what pain relievers are not doing? They are not fixing the source of the pain. Your body is working on that. By reducing your ability to feel the pain of an injury, you are not helping your body, but most likely, doing further damage.

This is why I say that pain, in a normal sense, is a good thing. It is a sign that something is wrong. Pain relievers are not going to fix that. Anti-inflammatory drugs are also not going to fix that. They are not solutions. They are only temporary relief while your body is trying to heal. It is your body that is the solution.It will always do whatever it can to keep you healthy. Your cast is not healing your broken arm; your body is fusing the bones back together! It is a facilitation in healing, not the solution.

Another good example of this bodily misunderstanding is your internal temperature. Do you try to reduce your fever when you are sick? Why? Do you know that your body increases your internal temperature to kill off bacteria and viral infections?

Those things can’t withstand the same temperature as the rest of your organs, cells and tissues, so this is yet again another sign that your body is working to heal itself. It is true, your temperature may in fact get too high, in which case you are probably experiencing an illness that your body needs help to fight, but up until that point you are just experiencing normal body function.

Reducing your body’s ability to fight normal, everyday pains is not a solution. This is the basis of chiropractic care. Chiropractic works on the fact that your body knows exactly what to do! Chiropractic adjustments help facilitate the brain to body communication, which is vital to life.

Don’t hamper your body’s ability to function and heal. Get the facts at www.CDAhealth.com, or visit us on our facebook page. You can also call 208-667-7434 for more information on how to keep your body fighting the good fight.

Sciatica….if you don’t know the meaning of the word, then you have probably never experienced the symptoms.

For those who have, the mild to moderate pain felt from the buttocks down to the knees can be a daily hindrance. You might feel it in one leg, or two, but the pain can be debilitating.

Sciatica is a common problem and one of the main reasons people actively seek out a chiropractor. Unlike many of the neurological problems that an unhealthy nervous system can create, sciatica constantly reminds you of its presence with pain. The symptoms are one of the main problems that get associated with chiropractic. Much like back and neck pain, people associate sciatica with a much needed trip to a chiropractor. And of course, they are right in that game plan.

So why is sciatica so common? We must first look at its origin:

“One common cause of sciatica is Piriformis Syndrome. Piriformis syndrome is named after the piriformis muscle. The piriformis muscle is located in the lower part of the spine, connects to the thighbone, and assists in hip rotation. The sciatic nerve runs beneath the piriformis muscle. This muscle is susceptible to injury from a slip and fall, hip arthritis, or a difference in leg length. Such situations can cause cramping and spasm to develop in the piriformis muscle, thereby pinching the sciatic nerve and causing inflammation and pain.”

As a patient of chiropractic care, you have probably already honed in on the “pinching the sciatic nerve” part of the above quoted material. Perhaps you have experienced this symptom in your own life?

Agitation of the muscle groups can come from many things, but constantly sitting is one of the key components in agitating the sciatic nerve. Muscle groups are meant to expand and contract within their normal function, not lay dormant under the stresses of the weight of the body.

For many people, daily activities such as sitting at a desk all day are responsible for the symptoms of sciatica. However, they are very treatable with chiropractic care.

Most people can think of friends and family members who experience this type of pain. Again, it is not uncommon, but there is no reason to go on living with shooting pains down one or both of your legs.

If you know someone suffering from the pains of sciatica…..educate them! Even a simple Google search on the internet will reveal that chiropractic is one of the most successful treatments available today for sciatica.

Don’t let your loved ones or friends miss out on life because of pain. You can change their lives today, simply by speaking with them about chiropractic!

To find out more about Spoelstra Family Chiropractic, give us a call at 208-667-7434, find us on the web or on Facebook.

It is important to remember a simple, but honest truth about pain. Pain is the body’s way of telling the brain that something is wrong. This truth holds true with other phenomenon such as swelling. Pain and swelling are the natural ways in which our body controls our use of specific parts in order for healing to occur.

Think about it. If you sprain your ankle and you experience pain and swelling, you are actually experiencing the healing process. The swelling controls the motion happening in the ankle, stabilizing it against movement that would otherwise prove harmful to the affected area. Pain is the body’s way of telling you to stop using your ankle while it is healing. These two things together are providing you with the information that you are injured; hence, you should reduce the usage of your ankle until the pain and swelling have subsided.

Unfortunately, as a society, we are quick to mask such pain as it is a modern inconvenience to our busy lifestyles. We may take a medication to reduce the swelling and pain, but we are actually just dulling the natural healing process. If pain is a way of telling you that a body part is injured, what happens when a pill reduces our ability to feel that pain? Perhaps we will begin to use our injured ankle in a way that we are not yet ready for, ultimately disrupting the healing process? If swelling is our natural protection from harmful motion, what happens when a pill reduces that swelling?

Although uncomfortable, and sometimes debilitating, pain and swelling are useful tools utilized by the body to do something extraordinary. That extraordinary thing is healing! Not only is it healing, but healing without your input. You do not have to tell your brain to begin the healing process, as it is automatic. This process, at its core, is all controlled by the nervous system.

You have three main parts to your nervous system. They are the brain, spinal cord, and a twelve mile long system of nerves that runs to every cell, tissue, and organ in your body. These three parts play an integral role in your overall health. They control every function in your body at lightning speed and often without any thought to the matter. Things are happening within your body at every second of the day that are controlled by your nervous system. These tasks controlled by the nervous system are the essence of life. Without them, you could not function.

Chiropractic care is centered on proper nervous system function at the very root of where most problems occur, your spine. You have 24 bones that make up your spine and protect a very vital part of your nervous system, the spinal cord. Between every bone in your spine, nerves are exiting through small holes and traveling to specific areas of your body. A subluxation is a condition where one or more bones of your spine move out of place, creating pressure on the nerves and reducing their overall ability to function at a peak level.

Dr. Chung Ha Suh of the University of Colorado showed that even a small pressure (about the weight of a dime) on a nerve can reduce the function of the nerve by 60 percent and that the nerve will start to degenerate if the pressure is sustained for three hours*. If vital information for your overall body function is carried by your nervous system, what happens when a small pressure (the weight of a dime) reduces the nerves ability to carry that information by 60%? How does our body then communicate with your brain to carry out proper function?

A doctor of chiropractic is trained to analyze and adjust subluxations within your spine, restoring your nerve function and allowing your body to function at an optimal level.

Think again to the example of a sprained ankle. What if the pain and swelling occur, but in association with a subluxation affecting the ability for needed information to be transmitted to the ankle for healing? You might surmise that healing would be slower, as your nervous system is reduced in its ability to function.

Chiropractic is the key to restoring your body’s ability to function at its full potential and do what it does naturally, heal!

Is there anyone out there who doesn’t know someone who is sick, getting sick, or just recovering from being sick this month? I would guess that the answer is no.

However, there are a few simple things you can do this season to ensure your body is ready to fight the good fight against illness. After all, that is what your body is made to do!We all have the secret to health locked away inside of us. It is always there, working to protect us, but it is not always as strong as we need it to be to keep us healthy.

There are a few things you can do, starting today, to ensure you stay healthy going into the holidays. They are simple steps that we hear again and again, but we are not always listening or willing to take the initiative to protect ourselves.

First, listen to your body! Do you feel drained? Are you waking up feeling like all you want to do is go back to sleep? Are you stressed out, staying up too late, getting too little rest, or just ignoring the signs that your body is succumbing to illness?

Sleep is paramount in ensuring that your body has adequate time to recover and heal.Think about a time when you were sick. I would bet that you just curled up somewhere with a blanket feeling miserable and let your body drift in and out of consciousness. Ask yourself, “Why did I wait until I was sick to get the rest my body needed to heal?”

We have all found ourselves in this position, but wouldn’t it make more sense to listen ahead of time and get an appropriate night’s rest before we fall ill? It is one of the easiest things we can do to make sure we stay healthy.

Another simple step is proper hydration. This means drinking water. Soda and coffee are not a suitable replacement for water. Our bodies operate more efficiently when they have the necessary hydration to do so.

How about diet? Most people probably do not make it through a single day without thinking about the foods that they are putting into their bodies. These foods require the body to initiate digestion. Simple, healthy foods are much easier for your body to break down and digest. Complex fats and carbohydrates take an extra effort to process, leaving your body with a much heavier workload.

If you put lack of sleep, improper hydration, and an unhealthy diet all together, day after day, you are reducing your body’s ability to function at an optimal level and you are creating a recipe for illness. By simply concentrating on the basics of a healthy body and immune system, you will experience a much greater supply of energy and you may not find yourself curled up under your blankets wishing you could just feel better.

There is another simple step you should also greatly consider this season, and that is chiropractic. Chiropractic is proven to boost your body’s immune system. Chiropractic concentrates on your nervous system which transmits all the important neurological messages to every cell, organ, and tissue in your body. These messages, especially in regards to illness, are the directions laid out by your brain to make sure everything is in working order within your body. These messages are happening every second of the day and without them you could not function.

Chiropractic removes hindrances to your nervous system function by correcting misalignments in your spine that restrict important nervous system messages traveling through your body. The philosophy is simple; without proper nervous system function, your body cannot receive all the important directions to keep you well.

This season, do your body a favor and help maintain the proper internal environment that allows your body to heal. Sleep, proper diet, hydration, and chiropractic care will be more beneficial then any medicine on the market.

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About Us

Patients seeking treatment at Spoelstra Family Chiropractic are assured of receiving only the finest quality of care through the use of modern chiropractic equipment and technology. Dr. Amy Spoelstra and the staff have a genuine concern for your well-being!